Sweet potato timing and light

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PeasIntheRain
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In yesterday's webinar on Considerations when starting a market garden,
Dan mentioned successfully growing sweet potatoes (kumara):
- 'seeded' 15 July, i.e. set in the slips
- grown indoors, harvested around 60 days later (really?!)
- planted 2 feet apart in rows

I'd been assuming that we had nothing like the sun and heat that sweet potatoes need, but I'd love to be wrong! The greens are marvellous in salad and soups.

So, questions:
- Was supplemental light or heat used when growing indoors, or were they OK even going into October? Was the mid-July timing because of the conditions or driven by the desire for the crop in October; as in, could the slips go in say late June or earlier in July?

- Can you comment on moisture and soil requirements?

- Have you had success in large pots rather than in-ground growing? My greenhouse is actually a glasshouse with more shelf space than in-ground space and the in-ground bed is still quite rocky.
I think I'll try a large pot. Or I might try putting a sweet potato in the ground, training the vines up but sharing the over-the-tuber space with another shallow-rooted crop as living mulch while the sweet potato leaves take off.
Trixi Agrios
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Thank you Peas in the Rain for asking these questions, they are mine more or less as well. I can accommodate good size grow bags in my greenhouse and was wondering if that is the way to go. I could try growing them in the soil but won’t have room if they take a lot of space.
Thank you.
jack oostenbrink
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PeasIntheRain wrote: Wed 16-Mar-2022, 11:20
- Have you had success in large pots rather than in-ground growing? My greenhouse is actually a glasshouse with more shelf space than in-ground space and the in-ground bed is still quite rocky.
I think I'll try a large pot. Or I might try putting a sweet potato in the ground, training the vines up but sharing the over-the-tuber space with another shallow-rooted crop as living mulch while the sweet potato leaves take off.

A large pot is certainly okay. The plants tend to take up a lot of ground space but if the pot is elevated hanging basket style you will have less of an issue with space loss.

I wasn't in the zoom meeting but I can outline how I started my sweet potatoes in the house this late winter.

I laid sweet potatoes from the store in vermicompost ammended potting soil in a aluminum baking tray. I then placed the tubers in the warmest part of the house to get them rooted. Once roots developed from the tuber they began to sprout out new greens. A week ago I started to clip the greens (4-6 inch slips) to place in a jar of water so that they develop their own roots.

the entire process from laying the tubers in soil to getting a rooted cutting took about 60 days
I wont be able to plant these out until it gets a lot warmer, so I am actually to early for my own use, but I plan to make more cuttings from theses once I've potted them and make the rooted plants available for sale

Ive included a few photos here to give some perspective. You will notice that only one of the sweet potatoes is really actively providing me with shoots and two others are trying. The others came from a costco produce section while the single in the center with healthy shoots was given to me by Dan (was grown at Local Harvest).
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Trixi Agrios
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Thanks Jack for the pictures and reply post. So the 60 days to mature sweet potatoes that Dan mentioned is actually more like 120 days from the start. I’d like it, and I assume others as well, if you could continue to document the process. I am going to start sweet potatoes using this process. Fingers crossed.
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